Common Configurations

Although there are many different ways that softwired groups can be set up, some tend to be more useful than others. Designers may therefore want to have easy-to-use templates for these in place, so that players don’t have to worry about setting flags that don’t interest them. As long as the basic models are all configurable, this is fine.

Common configurations are:

Fellowships. Temporary groups of characters that get together for a single session then go their separate ways.
Parties. Permanent or (more usually) casual adventuring bands. People who play together regularly.
Clans. Large, disparate groups of characters. Although mainly a social network, individual members may come together occasionally for activities that require numbers. They’re generally too unwieldy to organize for extended periods.
Guilds. These are like clans, but with a supporting game fiction. Some virtual worlds pursue this vision more than others: Dark Age of Camelot, for example, allows players to design their own guild crests, with the result that guilds feel more integrated into the virtual world than they otherwise might.
Alliances. Groups of guilds or clans acting as if they were one. A single, huge alliance that completely and aggressively dominates its virtual world is known as a überguild.

Many mid-sized groups are run by politician-type players, who chivvy people into doing things and generally keep the group together. Such groups can rapidly fall apart if their leader quits or moves on. Some designers regard this as a good thing, because it allows for players to join other groups with a better chance of survival (an evolutionary argument); other designers don’t like it because any failure of community could cause players to leave (the “other groups” that players join could be in another virtual world). The latter designers will institute automated rules of succession so that groups always have leaders, and votes of confidence so that inert leaders can be replaced; the former designers won’t.